


A Man Lies Awake

by JustAHumanMachine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25367017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAHumanMachine/pseuds/JustAHumanMachine
Summary: A quick spooky story I wrote and decided to post here too.A man lies awake in an open field. I’ve thought about that night, over and over again, trying to find an answer. I’ve been looking for the truth with my gut, since I don’t have a lot of evidence to work with. Then again, the truth’s ugly, and maybe better staying hidden...
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	A Man Lies Awake

A man lies awake in an open field. The sky is dark and spotted with stars, the tall grass sways in the gentle breeze, no one is around. Peace and quiet, finally. He closes his eyes and slowly drifts to sleep.

Behind him there’s a snap. His eyes fly open and he shoots awake, whirling around to find nothing. Well, not quite nothing. There is something on the edge of the trees, running, a silhouette that the man can’t identify. He looks down and sees a broken stick, barely a foot from where his head had been. Thoroughly freaked, he gets up and goes home, unnerved by how close whatever it was got to him, wondering how he didn’t notice it, trying not to think that it could have attacked.

I think about that night a lot. I try to get a grip on it, thinking about it from an isolated view, as if I were merely some distant observer and not there, in that moment. More than anything, I would love to forget it, but I can’t. That night is frozen in my mind with all the questions left unanswered.

I quietly empty my drink and try to take part in the small conversations around me. Despite my tendency to isolate myself and an odd manner of speech, people like me. I don’t know why. I mean, I try my best to be kind, I’ve got a sharp wit and a great sense of humor, and sometimes I’ll say something that makes them think. I think too much already. Like now, when I can’t get my mind of that shadow sprinting into the woods.

And slowly, my mind fills in the details. The story’s false, I know that much, but it’s easier to pretend then face what really waits in the darkness. A bear, perhaps. Yes, a bear. Bears live around here. So now the story goes:

A man lies awake in an open field. He is calm and quiet, and sensing no disturbance, a bear emerges from the woods behind him, searching for something to eat in the dark night. Slowly, the bear approaches, smelling something odd in the air. Just a step behind the half-asleep man, it steps on a twig. The snap rings out like a gunshot, and spooked by its own misstep, the bear runs back into the cover of the woods, leaving the man confused and wide eyed in terror.

...No, that’s not it. It doesn’t sit right in the stomach, the way something true does. Instead it make you curl up inside and want to vomit out those lies you wish could ease your pain. Across the room, someone is singing. Karaoke night, I suppose. I’d like to join in. But I don’t. I sit and think and try to find a lie that feels like the truth. How about this:

A man lies awake in an open field. Not too far away, some idiots are prepping fireworks to shoot off later tonight. One of them slips, and a loose rocket goes of with a bang that makes their ears hurt and ring like a warning bell. It’s loud enough that the man, so far out that he cannot see all this, only hears the sound and jumps awake. The shadow on the wood’s edge is just an overactive mind trying to find an explanation.

That’s doesn’t work either. Realistic, perhaps, but it doesn’t feel true. It feels like the kind of lie that would slip past the logical parts of your brain. Only the conscience could catch it. I get another drink and chug it in a single gulp. Maybe I should switch to alcohol. That could tear my mind from that eerie night. Or it could make me spill everything I know to the people I don’t want to hear it.

Out of the corner of my eye I see him. Loud, obnoxious, not a single trait to redeem him, and yet everyone flocks around this man regardless of the underhanded things he spits out. Are they stupid? Can’t they see him for what he is? No one would listen to me anyway. Everyone knows we avoid each other, but I know speaking to or about this man would put a crack in my lies and let the vile truth come spilling out. Don’t think about him, I tell myself, but then my mind falls back into another story, one less in line with the reality I know, but that strikes a truer chord:

A man lies awake in an open field. A ghost follows him there. An old family member, a friend, an enemy who’s passed on, for better or for worse. It haunts him for years, beckoning for him to join them on the other side, but the man has resisted thus far. Tonight, the ghost will force his hand, approaching softly, with cold hands that will strange the man in his sleep. He won’t feel a thing, the ghost thinks, as their steps suddenly cross the line from ethereal to tangible with that snap of a twig. The ghost vanishes, leaving nought but a moving shadow for the man to examine.

I sigh. This is hard to admit, but I have to say it: I’m not a good person. I try my hardest to be, I try to be nice and kind and the best I can be, but that’s not all there is to me. There’s a darkness, a selfish, angry, sadistic darkness that wants revenge for the smallest slights. I’ve done a good job of keeping up the lie, that I’m a good person who would never hurt a soul, but it’s hard. And when that kind lie is thrown back at you, taken advantage of, ground into the dirt beneath the heel of a laughing madman, a crack appears, small, but dangerous. The demon asks for blood, and for a second, you’re willing to feed it.

I think everyone tells that lie. Some of them are smaller, sometimes people give up on some parts of the lie, a lot of people lie to themselves. I don’t. I’m not able. I wake up in the morning, I look in the mirror, and I see an awful person. But I’m doing my best. I’ve had more than enough chances to be the bad guy, chances where I could get away, chances where no one would ever know, and I didn’t take them. I’m determined not to be a liar, but it’s hard to keep up, especially when-

I feel someone staring at me. I glance over my shoulder and he’s turned around, but I know who it was. The man keeps glancing back at me, and I feel a chill. Perhaps the reason that night sticks in my memory is because it accompanied a shift in behavior from the one man on earth I knew I hated.

We’d always been at each other’s throats, he’d belittle me and treat me like I was stupid - I felt my grip on the glass tighten, I am not stupid - and I would give him cold threats and dissections of his intelligence. It was a gentleman’s war, between two good men, two great liars, but it was as savage as we could be without hurling spears at each other. But after that night, he changed. He no longer sought me out to taunt me, but instead kept to his own, our only interaction being an uneasy glance. A sense if danger had entered our childish rivalry. I feel like you should know this - we were both fifteen then, which makes things all the worse. At the time I thought I was mature, but I look back and see a child, wiser than his years, but still far too young to do what I did.

I wonder for a moment. Everyone has an evilness inside them, and yet great evil acts are few and far between. I shudder. How many people are not evil merely because they have never gotten a chance to be? And how many, if such a choice fell into their laps, would take that chance without a second thought?

I look back towards my enemy and it hits me - he knows. I grow almost sick with terror. He was there, after all, I know it. One last story springs to mind. This one, I know, is true. It chills me to the marrow of my bones, lines up with my heartbeat, stabs me in the gut only a real truth can.

A man lies awake in a quiet field. He is not alone.

On the edge of the woods walks another man, holding a shovel. Where he comes from, where he goes, why he has a shovel in the woods in the dead of night, that doesn’t matter. I must ask that you believe the small, odd, unlikely details of this tale, for the simplest version of this story is not the truth. Here’s what matters: the boy is fifteen, and he sees his enemy, someone he believes gives nothing to the world and only takes and taints and destroys. An evil man. Not as great of a liar as he believes.

And then the man thinks, I could kill him. No one knows he’s out here, no one is around, no one would miss the half asleep victim, and the rain would be here soon to wash the footsteps away. It did rain later that night, I was caught in the storm on my way home. Here’s the thing: the man would get away with it, and the weapon was in his hand.

This is the part that scares me. I know you’ll think any good man would turn away, would know it was wrong, would hold their character in that moment. But the man doesn’t turn away. He takes a few steps forward. The man doesn’t stir - he’s asleep, the boy with the shovel thinks, almost giddy in a way that sickened him. He takes a few more steps, then a few more, his hands shivering with anticipation on the shovel’s handle. It was so, so simple. Shovel blade on the neck, foot on the blade, foot and blade into the ground. He doesn’t think about what the man has done, the reason he should die, anything that would drive a man to murder. He just gets close enough to count the freckles on his enemy’s face and lets the shovel hover just above the man’s throat.

The simplest, cliche version of this story would be that this is when the would-be murderer steps on a twig and runs into the night, scared of being caught. But that’s not what happened. What happened was this: the man stands there for a second and his thoughts turn to himself. Not in a narcissistic way, not in a fearful, what am I doing way, but with a simple statement and a simple question. Sure, the man deserves to die. But are you good enough to make that choice?

No. No, he’s not. So after waiting for the longest moment, he takes the shovel, slings it over his shoulders, and heads back toward the woods.

That’s when he steps on the twig. That’s when the sounds makes the man, unaware that he could have been a corpse, jump awake, and that makes the other, fully aware he could have been a monster, run. Perhaps the sound of the twig haunts him. Perhaps he thinks about that night as much as I do. I don’t know if he understands the full significance of it, or if it affects him the way I do. But he avoids me for a reason, almost like he can smell that brush with the unspeakable on me.

That is the truth. It’s hard to think about, hard to admit, hard to factor into my view of the world. Once someone the world knows as a kind man almost, almost murders someone and goes back to life like nothing happened, still acting like they’d never run their fingers through that power over life and death, it does things to how you think.

But odd as it may seem, I think I feel better about the world. In the dark in an open field, where the only witness is someone whose life is in your hands, there is no need for a mask. There’s no need to pretend you’re a good person. There’s no reason the man with the shovel couldn’t have done the deed. But he didn’t. He turned away.

Perhaps the mask, the act, is not quite a lie. I hope so. After all, I was there that night.

A man was asleep in an open field, and I held a shovel over his throat.


End file.
